I’ll be blunt. My leads have dried up to almost a complete stop. We’re over a month into a “stay at home” order in NYC and clients are not pulling the trigger on booking events until we have a little clearer of a timetable to when this is going to be over. The first thing I thought of when this all hit was my existing clientele. Thankfully, most are postponing instead of cancelling. So the work is still there, but what’s gone away is the cash I would have had in hand as their final payments came in. (Our policy is final balances are due 30 days prior to the event date). For these postponed events, I’ve now shifted to asking for 50% of the final balance due on their ORIGINAL event date and the other 50% of the final balance due 30 days prior to the new date. This puts some cash in my pocket now to get me through this impasse.

The current situation has also reinforced for me the importance of having multiple revenue streams. Luckily, I was ahead of the curve on this with a few side streams of income in place. I was lambasted by a lot of DJs for preaching this practice but now a lot of those same DJs are on life support with their single income DJ businesses right now!

If you don’t have a side hustle, how can you start one now, you ask? Here’s a few ideas. Sell some of your DJ gear that you don’t use anymore (we all have some) online, sell playlist creation services to corporate or individual clients, host a workshop on a skill you excel at. Outside of the industry, maybe become an online product reviewer? The sky is the limit!

The second quote that I live by is attributed to Darwin and goes, “It Is not the strongest or the smartest species that survive, but the ones that are the most adaptable to change”. There is no doubt that we will emerge out of this, but DJ companies are going to have to do the work now to be relevant and in business when we emerge post COVID-19.

We’ve been on the cusp of virtual events taking a huge piece of the event pie for some time, but were still waiting for technology to make it possible (hello 5G) and clients to embrace the concept. While we don’t have 5G readily available yet (it’s coming though), all humans (outside of family) are having to connect online right now. I really do feel this situation we find ourselves in might be the thing that pushes this ‘virtual’ concept into the mainstream. I’m seriously looking at online/virtual parties as a viable platform for future business.